Jungian Psychology as Catholic Theology

Description

An interesting article about Carl Jung and the detrimental influence he has had on Catholic Theology.

Larger Work

St. Catherine Review

Pages

Jungian Psychology as Catholic Theology

Publisher & Date

Aquinas Publishing Ltd, May-June 1997

What is Carl Gustav Jung doing in the Church?

Who was C.G. Jung?

Swiss psychoanalyst, Carl Gustav Jung, reared a Lutheran, abandoned the Christianity of his parents for the occult. Jungs entire life and work were motivated by his detestation of the Catholic Church, whose religious doctrines and moral teachings he considered to be the source of all the neuroses which afflicted Western man. In his 1912 book, New Paths in Psychology, Jung wrote that the only way to overthrow the neuroses inducing Judeo-Christian religion and its "sex-fixated ethics" was to establish a new religionthe religion of psychoanalysis.

Jungs drive to formulate a "better" religion, was the result of his trying to justify his own sins. What Jung was increasingly concerned with was justifying sexual libertinism, and his efforts extended not merely to reviving the lost gods of paganism, but in transforming Christ and Christianity to serve his own purposes.

His search was for a "scientific" justification for incest, patricide, sodomy, sun-worship and phallus worship; and what support he could not find in the works of his contemporary neopagan archaeologists, he sought to find by plumbing the unconscious through Eastern meditation techniques and ancient pagan rituals. Jung appreciated faith and ritual, but only of the occult variety: hyptnotism, spiritism, seances, cults of Mithras and Dionysus, "liturgies" that unlocked the powers of darkness.

To Jung, only the revival of the ancient pagan cults of the earth goddesses could repair the damage caused by the imposition of Christianity (with its Semitic origins) on Western European peoples. Jung was an avowed polytheist, a pagan in the old sense of the word. Jung took up the cause for matriarchy and its symbol, goddess worship and the cult of mother earthwhich glorified the body and the earthbut Jung re-framed the practice to make it seem less occultic and more scientific by making an analogy to archeologya style of translating or repackaging arcane or occultist ideas to make them congruent with the psychiatric and scientific terminology of his day.

Jung was reared in a time marked by the revival of paganism, an infatuation with Freidrich Nietzsches "cult of personality" and an obsession with the occult in which eroticism, mysticism and the cult of neophilia (the love of the new) reigned supreme. He was also strongly influenced by the ideas of positivism, evolutionism and scientism. This was all mixed with the degeneration of Protestant theology which had become consumed with a desire to debunk the divinity of Christ. Major influences on Jung were the "god-building" movement of Russian atheist Anatoly Lunacharsky, Wagnerian spiritual elitism, volkish sun-worshipping movements, along with dozens of other movements that wanted to institute a new German paganism.

Jungs mentor was psychoanalyst Otto Gross (1877-1920). He was particularly drawn to Grosss ideas about the "life-enhancing value of eroticism" and his concept of "free love". Jung wrote approvingly of Grosss use of sex orgies to promote pagan spirituality, as he did when he wrote: "The existence of a phallic or orgiastic cult does not indicate eo ipso a particularly lascivious life any more than the ascetic symbolism of Christianity means an especially moral life." Jung, absorbed by eroticism and entranced by the occult, sought to provide a holy merger of the two, which is now popularly know as "Jungianism". In 1912 he announced that he could no longer be a Christian, and that only the "new" science of psychoanalysisas he defined it through "Jungiansism"could offer personal and cultural renewal and rebirth. For Jung , honoring God meant honoring the libido.

Between 1936 and 1939 Jung sent out his disciples from Zurich to Britain and the United States to spread his doctrines and establish an anti-Church based on his theories of psychotherapy.

Transforming Catholicism into the Occult

It is truly amazing that Carl Gustav Jung, dedicated to the destruction of the Catholic Church and the establishment of an anti-Church based on psychoanalysis, has become the premier spiritual guide in the Church throughout the United States and Europe over the last thirty years.

Jungianism has become an enormous money-making business too, as the advertisements for books and cassettes for Jungian Catholics in Catholic publications attest. Jungian practices commonly promoted are: "discovering the god within", "dream analysis", "psychodrama", "journaling", "journeying". These practices are all ways, according to Jungs methods, to tap into ones subconscious to retrieve "hidden knowledge". Instead of calling it "the occult", it is referred to as Jungian. This sort of spirituality, it must be stated, is nothing more than an affirmation of self through highly questionable methods.

One cannot, however, be both "Catholic" and "Jungian". They are mutually exclusive adjectives. However, for many who consider themselves "religious" and form the intelligentsia of the Church, Jung has clearly replaced Christ as the God-man in their belief system. In the past 25 years Jung has risen to be the dominant influence in Catholic spirituality. Today, Robert Noll, in his book, The Jung Cult, comments, "for literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individuals in our culture, Jung and his ideas are the basis of a personal religion that either supplants their participation in traditional organized Judeo-Christian religion or accompanies it.&quot

What is Jung doing in the Church?

Jungians teach, through Catholic seminars and workshops, tapes and books, that one can discover God in two "ways": comunally in prayer that employs Catholic elements and symbols, and personally by use of "conscious dreaming" techniques which can be powerful in creating delusions. The experience Jung extolled was nothing but the experience of self-induced fantasies and visions. Indeed, he has succeeded at unlocking the power of the occult for modern man.

Many Catholics have been known to abandon their faith after becoming involved in Jungian-type spirituality programs. They usually remain in the Church, however, determined to change her and bring her to this new awareness. It is of note that many have observed that once Catholics enter the Jung Cult, they quickly learn to despise the rosary as an out-of-date, ineffective symbol of the old Church.

Jungianism in the Church poses a threat to the orthodox believer. Those who subscribe to a traditional notion of Catholic spirituality are regarded by Jungians as naïve believers locked into some past cultures mythical story of God. That is why inclusive language carries such import with them. Traditional English and traditional liturgy is denounced as "sexist", as "patriarchal", as "dysfunctional". Sister Barbara Fiands notion of an "androgynous" God (who is both masculine and feminine) is an example of just how far Jungians will go in their efforts to redefine traditional language. The notion of an androgynous God leads Jungians to view both men and women as neither male nor female.

Jungians operating as Catholics are fond of reinterpreting Catholic concepts. Jesus Christ, for instance, is understood as a man who spent His life discovering his own spirituality, discovering His "God Within". He becomes, therefore, the prototypical example of one who understands his own Godhead. And it only follows that Jungians see themselves too as potential Gods; their life mission is understood as one of discovering oneself as they believe Jesus did so well.

Sabotaging the liturgy

Catholic liturgy is redefined as the work of the community. In their minds, it is the gathering together for the ritual which creates the presence of God. The Mass is understood as the celebration of the community and ourselves. Hence, most Jungians deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in the Catholic sense of the term. They believe it is most important to alter traditional Catholic architecture to reflect their own understanding of liturgy. Jungians regard as critical the need for church architecture to be "open," centered on the people of God. This is implemented by removing many, if not all statues of saints and stations of the cross. The disctinction between sanctuary space and people space is blurred, if not entirely eliminated. They insist there is no place for the Tabernacle in a Catholic Church since God is already with us.

Since liturgy is regarded as the work of the people rather than something the people of God receive, Jungian priests and liturgists advocate altering or deleting words from the sacred liturgy as they see fit. They purport that the assembly can consecrate the Eucharist, that they can dance in celebration. Any ritual save for the traditional Catholic liturgy is acceptable to them. Their understanding of God and the liturgy permits what they call "deep ecumenism", and they will participate in almost any kind of worship, and incorporate any ritual into the Catholic liturgy.

Undermining Catholic Morality

Subsets of Jungian spirituality include eco-spirituality, eco-feminism, Earth (or Gaia) worship. Jungians look to the clouds, to the trees, the cycles of the moon, planets, seasons, and animals to inform their "body-prayer", "psycho-drama", and "mime".

Since Jungians tend to be syncretists (believing all religions are reconcilable with one another), they also look to Native American, Eastern and Wiccan traditions. Since divine revelation is understood as the living experieces of the universe through all religions, peoples, animals and plants, Jungians rely on dream interpretation, the enneagram (personality typing), I Ching, tarot cards, and other methods of divination. Since the Jungian is busy mapping out his subconscious, he needs such methods to navigate on his journey. The typical Jungian will receive many visions, dreams, revelations and omens to illuminate his way.

Being that most of their methods and understandings are irreconcialable with authentic Catholic teaching, initiated Jungians understand that they must do everything in their power to eliminate the traditional understanding of Roman Catholicism. They view orthodox Catholics who are loyal to Rome as threats to the advancement of their ideas, especially their ideas on sexual "enlightenment".

To be truly Jungian one must have this enlightened, i.e. libertine, view of sexuality which is necessary, they claim, to be fully alive. This is why sex education is so important to them. Jungians see their mission as to initiate children, at as young an age as possible, into their views on enlightened sexuality. This is, of course, easily accomplished by those who control the education policies at many Catholic schools. Jungians then logically embrace contraception, homosexuality and sometimes even abortion, simply because these are part of peoples "lived experiences" and enable them to explore their sexuality uninhibited.

Much of what has ailed the Church over the past 30 yearssex education, the abused liturgy, faulty theology, degenerative sexual morality, the mainstreaming of homosexuality, contraception abortion and euthanasiacan be traced back to Jungian ideologues who train teachers to instruct others in their "Jungian Way". The damaging effects of Jungianism are manifest in our Catholic schools, universities, and seminaries, in our parishes, and Catholic media. We can only rid the Church of this heresy through proper catechetical instruction supplemented by an awareness of those who seek to undermine the true teaching of the Church. Look into what is being taught at your parish school and at your diocesan seminary.

QUOTES from C.G. Jung

"I am for those who are out of the Church" Carl Jung, in a letter to Joland Jacobi, on hearing the news she had converted to Catholicism.

Jung: "What is so special about Christ, that he should be the motivational force? Why not another modelPaul or Buddha or Confucius or Zoroaster?"

In a letter to Freud: "I think we must give [psychoanalysis] time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once werea drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal."